#will tell him to publish them

[marzipanandminutiae]

reading Shirley Jackson's college love letters to her future husband is like watching the heroine go into the basement in a slasher movie

like. girl. I know he's also a big nerd, and probably sometimes takes breaks from incessantly criticizing and trying to change you, but I'm from the future and this relationship is going to suck until you die please dump his ass

(also speaking of dying, Just Say No To Mixing Barbituates and Amphetamines. yes, even if the doctor says it's okay. no reason. celebrate your hypothetical 49th birthday really hard I SAID NO REASON CALM DOWN)

[hedgehog-moss]

In other news, this week a French publisher on his way to the London Book Fair was arrested by British counter-terrorist police to be questioned about his participation in protests in France.

A French publisher has been arrested on terror charges in London after being questioned by UK police about participating in anti-government protests in France.

Moret arrived at St Pancras [...] with his colleague Stella Magliani-Belkacem, the editorial director at the Paris-based publishing house, to be confronted by the two officers. [...] He was questioned for six hours and then arrested for alleged obstruction in refusing to disclose the passcodes to his phone and computer. [...] He was transferred to a police station in Islington, north London, where he remained in custody on Tuesday. He was later released on bail.

Éditions la Fabrique is known for publishing radical left authors. Moret also represents the French science fiction novelist Alain Damasio and had arranged more than 40 appointments at the London book fair. [...]

[Quoting publishing house’s press release] “The police officers claimed that Ernest had participated in demonstrations in France as a justification for this act – a quite remarkably inappropriate statement for a British police officer to make, and which seems to clearly indicate complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.” [...] “There’s been an increasingly repressive approach by the French government to the demonstrations, both in terms of police violence, but also in terms of a security clampdown.”

(Guardian link - BBC link) (article in French)

The publishing house (here’s their latest statement in French) and the publisher’s lawyer mention that the British police asked him “Do you support Emmanuel Macron? Did you attend protests against the pension reform?” and he was also asked to name the authors with anti-government views that his employer has published. They add, “Asking the representative of a publishing house, in the framework of counter-terrorism, about the opinions of his authors, is pushing even further the logic of political censorship and repression of dissenting thought. In a context of social protests and authoritarian escalation on the part of the French government, this aspect [of the questioning] is chilling.”

Being an accomplice to thoughtcrime by publishing dissident authors gets you treated like an international terrorist now... The publisher’s lawyer suggests that French authorities asked the UK to help them get their hands on the publisher’s contacts in the radical left sphere. But on the face of it, we’ve got: Exercise your right to protest your government in France -> get arrested by counter-terrorist UK police in London. That’s literally the reason he was given for being greeted by police at the train station...

[tennessoui]

I'm begging on my hands and knees for more Twilight au, and those are words I never thought I'd say! Anakin being able to resist compulsion, and Obi-Wan seeming instantly obsessed, and poor Shmi! Pretty please 🥺🙏

hey!! sure! here's some more!

(2.5k)

Having a sheriff for a mom sucked a lot when he was a kid growing up in a small town. There was probably nothing Anakin was rebelling against more at eleven, at thirteen, at seventeen than the rule of law his mother represented. 

All things considered, she was pretty good at separating her home life from her worklife. It was Anakin who was bad at respecting the separation, Anakin who couldn’t keep son out of delinquent.  There’s only so many times he could be pulled out of wreckage and bars and buildings with Keep Out No Trespassing signs on them before he got The Sheriff at home and out in public.

He’d hated it growing up and had come to grudgingly respect it later and in fits and starts. His dad dying had, terribly and ironically, helped a lot. His mother had had a stroke just before and then Anakin had been faced with the possibility of being an orphan, and the terror of that had mellowed him out.

Sorta.

He still hates a lot of things about his mother’s job. Especially the fact that she’s the sheriff of a very small town.

And when people talk, she listens.

The thing about small towns is that everyone’s always fucking talking. And other people are always fucking lsitening so they can talk later. One big fucking community, which means when Anakin comes home from his weird doctor’s appointment with Dr. Kenobi, a few hours later because he took a detour biking along the edge of the seaside cliffs just to spit in the good doctor’s metaphorical face, Shmi Skywalker already knows more than Anakin ever planned to tell her.

Like, for instance, “Sheila says that Dr. Kenobi thought it would behoove you to spend some time at the local library volunteering.”

Anakin pauses, backpack half-slung off his shoulders. He hangs his stuff up slowly, careful to keep his tone very light. “Did Sheila say what I told him after he said that?” 

His mom’s silence is very loud.

“I don’t want to do i—”

“I asked the new librarian about it on my way home from the station. She thinks it’s a wonderful idea. Apparently we used to have a program like that in the forties but it died out during the war.”

“Mom, come on—”

“It’ll look good on resumes, saying you created and supported a local reading program.”

“Yeah, but I’m a bit too old to be applying for babysitting positio—”

“It’ll look good for me as well,” Shmi says in her sheriff voice. “Elections are coming up soon. It’ll be good, if my kid was involved in the community.”

Anakin’s glad that his back is still turned to the living room, where his mom is sitting. “Are you gonna run again?” he asks, paying special attention to his tone this time.

“Why wouldn’t I?” his mom replies. “I’ve been sheriff for a decade and a half.”

Anakin lets his eyes fall closed for a second, knowing that his face can’t be seen. This is how they end up half the time: Shmi’s ardent belief that she is invincible, going up against Anakin’s desperate desire for her to be so.

And they just don’t talk about it. As if they’re actually in agreement.

He knows how this is going to shake out.

“Do you have any plans tomorrow?” His mother asks.

Anakin’s eyes remain closed. “I guess so,” he says.

—--------

Mrs. Kenobi—call me Satine—is sort of scary up close. She’s tall. She glides between bookshelves. Anakin’s never met someone who glides before. And she’s so intensely, incredibly, blindingly perfect that Anakin would rather be anywhere but in her vicinity. There’s something incredibly unnerving about the symmetry of her face, the sharpness of her cheekbones. She’s obviously an absolute knock-out, just drop-dead gorgeous, but it makes Anakin’s skin crawl and his heart beat fast, but not in a good way or a normal teenage boy way.

Anakin tries to keep the unease off his face as Satine leads him through a tour of the library, a gentle hand on his forearm. That’s another thing Anakin doesn’t really like. She’s wearing satin gloves. He doesn’t know anyone who wears gloves anymore.

It’s just all a bit…unsettling.

“I put in a few words around the school yesterday afternoon,” Satine tells him. They pass by the mystery section, the fantasy section, and take a hard right into the young adult section. The shelves are smaller here, and Anakin feels rather stupidly gigantic as he and Satine walk through them. “To some parents picking their children up after school. They agreed it would be good exposure to bring them to the library for an hour or so of reading before supper.”

Anakin highly doubts it will be, but Satine hasn’t really asked him.

She sweeps past his figure and pushes open a pair of double doors with a flourish better suited for a Russian tsarina hosting an elaborate ball than a small town librarian showing off a small, cramped, and dusty room filled with padded seats and threadbare rugs.

And then, as if she has been waiting to put the last nail in the proverbial coffin, Satine adds, “A few students from the local high school will be here as well.”

“Sorry,” Anakin says, “are you saying I’m going to be reading to high school students? Can’t they do that themselves?”

After all, Anakin went to high school here. Academics hadn’t been too rigorously challenging, but they’d taught the fucking basics.

Satine raises one perfectly plucked eyebrow in his direction. “They’ll be volunteering as well.”

Oh. Right.

“It looks good on their college applications,” Satine waves a hand through the air and the words linger there. Anakin looks out the rather dirty window, jaw clenching. “I’ve already chosen a handful of books I think the young ones will enjoy.”

Anakin, committed to his fate, pads over to the titles placed carefully ontop of a short, stout side table. 

“Peter the Rabbit,” he reads off the top. “Peter Pan. Alice in Wonderland. Treasure Island. The Prince and the Pauper—look, you’re the librarian here, but don’t you have anything written this century maybe? Harry Potter, even.”

“These are classics,” Satine tells him, her nose raised into the air as if she has encountered something particularly foul-smelling. She turns away, presumably to return to the front desk so she can welcome half the fucking town inside the library so Anakin can read them fucking Anne of Green Gables and become a better person.

“These are fucking boring,” he mutters to himself, flicking the cover of the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz open. Publication date: 1900. “I’d rather be in Kenobi’s office getting lectured at.”

There’s a sharp noise of disapproval from the doorway, and Anakin’s head snaps up to see the tail end of a very heated look from the librarian before the door closes behind her.

He shivers, alone in the emply room, and it takes several long minutes for his heart to settle back into its normal pace. 

—----------

After the fourth kid sneezes, Anakin closes his book with a snap and stands from the very small chair they’ve got him sitting on. “Come on,” he tells the cluster of children he’s been assigned to. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Are you kidnapping us?” One of them, a snot-nosed kid who’d started the sneezing says, rubbing at her cheek beneath her glasses. “Cause mommy says that’s not allowed.”

“I’m not kidnapping you,” Anakin snaps back, barely holding in his natural follow-up to the sentence which is of course, I don’t want to be around any of you in the first place. “Also, just for future reference, you shouldn’t ask if someone’s kidnapping you after you already start following them.”

The girl scowls and reaches up her hand to hold onto Anakin’s. 

For the love of Christ.

“We’re just going to go into the main part of the library,” Anakin tells his children, all six of them. “They have windows out there.”

They have windows out there and they also have parents. Parents who absolutely should be doing other things with their lives and precious hour of extra freetime.

Parents who are clustered instead around the library’s front desk as the town’s newest librarian holds court.

“Is reading time over?” one of the kids asks him, turning his head to look up at Anakin.

Anakin thinks about it. “Do you want reading time to be over?”

The kid thinks about it back. “Yeah,” he decides. “You don’t do the voices good.”

“It’s a boring book,” Anakin tells the kid. “Voices aren’t going to make it better.”

“Voices always make it better,” another kid says. “They make everything better.”

“Oh look,” Anakin says. “Is that your father?”

He gestures vaguely towards the cluster of drooling middle-aged somethings focused on Satine.

The kid peeks around his thigh and then shakes his head. “No,” he says. “That’s Dr. Obi.”

“Dr. Obi!” The kid holding Anakin’s hand says, and she lets go.

Anakin gets a bad feeling about this, a feeling that only doubles when he turns around to see Dr. Kenobi sauntering towards him, hands tucked into the pockets of a long dark jacket that makes him look even more pale than he already is.

He scowls automatically as the man gets closer. “Dr. Obi.”

Dr. Kenobi spares him a look that’s far too amused for Anakin’s pleasure before he crouches down to the level of the kids. “Hello there, young ones,” he says, opening his arms to accept a hug from the traitor of a girl Anakin’s just spent thirty minutes reading to. “Are you eating all your vegetables? Even the brussel sprouts?”

“I like brussel sprouts,” one of the kids reports sounding proud, and that starts a cacophony of opinions about brussel sprouts from all around Anakin.

“Wow! One of mine just absolutely hates them,” Dr. Kenobi says. “She refuses to eat them, so you’re very brave, Michele.” He lets go of the girl and turns his golden-brown gaze up to Anakin. “And what does Mr. Skywalker think?” he asks, raising a hand for Anakin to take. It’s very obvious he’s asking for a hand up and Anakin is obeying before he thinks about it. He snatches his hand free almost too soon, but Dr. Kenobi doesn’t even have the grace to lose his balance and fall over. 

His hand is like ice in Anakin’s, and Anakin stuffs his fingers into the pocket of his jacket automatically a second later.

“Do brussel sprouts help with circulation?” he’s biting out before he can stop himself. “Cause you may need some then.”

Kenobi’s head tilts very slightly to the side as his eyes catch and hold onto Anakin’s. “Oh?” he asks lightly. 

“You’re cold,” is all Anakin mutters in return. He swipes his other hand against the back of his neck. “”S poor circlutation, isn’t it? Something in your diet maybe?” Dr. Kenobi blinks at him and then breaks into a wide smile. “I can assure my diet is very…circulation-mindful,” he says. “Blood health positive.”

Anakin’s mouth thins into a line. He guesses that’s what he gets for trying to give health advice to a doctor, especially a doctor like Kenobi who just so happens to be devastatingly attractive and also smart.

And also an asshole. And also married.

Speaking of which. “Are you here to fend off your wife’s admirers with a scalpel?” Kenobi’s eyebrows raise. “Young ones,” he turns his head away from Anakin, down to the children.

The strangest feeling breaks of Anakin the second Kenobi looks away, almost as if a strange pressure he hadn’t even realized had been building was suddenly dissolved.

The very small beginnings of a headache begin to thrum in his temples.

“Young ones, it’s time to find your parents, isn’t it?” Kenobi says, and like fucking magic, the crowd of six children around Anakin disperse, children swarming away from him towards the group of adults surrounding the front desk.

“Can you teach me how to do that?” Anakin blurts out, even though he’d meant to ignore Kenobi now that he doesn’t have to make nice in front of small kids. Not that he was really making nice in the first place. But now he definitely doesn’t have to.

Kenobi gives him a half-smile, eyes heavy-lidded. “It’s a special sort of skill that takes, above all else, much practice.”

Anakin scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Does Kenobi think he can’t commit himself to something even as mundane as a fucking commanding persona? Does he think he doesn’t have it in him to be–-

Kenobi’s eyebrows go up again. “Has anyone ever told you that you are exceedingly defensive?” 

“You’re extremely nosey,” Anakin snaps back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t you have better things to focus on right now anyway?”

He gestures loosely towards Satine, who has started playing with one of the mother’s bracelets as the other woman stands and looks at her rather dumbfounded.

Kenobi follows his gaze and then lets out a huff of laughter. “Satine can take care of herself,” he says, even though it hadn’t really been Satine that Anakin was worried about.

He’s about to open his mouth to say so when Kenobi turns back to him. His eyes are piercing, a dark, captivating sort of gold. 

“Do you find my wife beautiful, Anakin?” he asks.

Anakin blinks. His headache is getting worse, which is probably down to what can only be a trick-question fashioned to look like a grenade lobbed at his feet. “I don’t think there’s a good answer to that,” he mutters, rubbing absently at his forehead. “What the fuck.”

“An honest answer is a good one,” Kenobi says lightly. “Tell me honestly.”

The words feel pulled from Anakin’s stomach, and he’s opening his mouth before he realizes it. “No,” he says. 

Kenobi’s eyebrows crinkle together. “No?”

Anakin curses his stupid impulse control. “She’s beautiful,” he adds quickly. “Really. But…it makes me uncomfortable.”

Kenobi’s lips purse, and then there’s something like disappointment in his eyes as he examines Anakin. “Ah yes,” he murmurs. “I’ve been told my wife can make countless young men feel rather uncomfortable. It’s normal in men your age, Anakin. Sexual ar—”

“Uncanny,” Anakin blurts out. He doesn’t mean to, but he also doesn’t want to listen to  Kenobi trying to lecture him on fucking arousal in the public library. When it’s not even relevant. “She’s so beautiful, it’s uncanny.”

“Uncanny.”

“Yeah, like. Monstrous.”

Kenobi’s mouth falls open, pink lips parted in what looks like honest surprise.

Anakin’s own eyes widen as it hits him that he’s just called Kenobi’s wife a monster to Kenobi’s face.

“Shit,” he says. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m going to go.” 

He throws a look at Kenobi, whose eyes are lit with something a lot like interest and then across the library to where Satine’s head is turned, cocked, and eyebrows up high on her forehead, as if she’s just heard everything he’s said.

He decides rather immediately that he’s going to take the backdoor exit.

[winepresswrath]

unfortunately i just pictured showvese night island and experienced such a wild rush of dopamine. we're never getting showverse night island 😭

[rivalkieran]

Any chance you're in the mood to talk about your trainer Victor?

ohhhh when am I Not in the mood to talk about one of my kids. victor 'peered at the secrets of the universe and went mad' scalibur... I've been thinking about what he does in the future since time in the internal solisverse in my head has been actually moving again and hes already hit the big 2-0!!

I think since hes already kinda been exposed to the universe's backstage hes like one of the only characters that is able to actually research Stories (as in the concepts holding reality together) without going mad because hes already been there done that. yknow. although he cant really explain it to anyone without sounding like a lunatic. or making them go mad. so hes also a librarian <3

[dragonnarrative-writes]

imma come back and make a more lucid and well thought out, loving review of part 6 of transferable skills but I just worked a long shift and got home, so all I can say is. I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU! I give you and your beautiful story, soft consensual smooches on the forehead of that beautiful, wrinkly, talented brain of yours. It’s just so good, I’m kicking my feet and rereading it with my sleep deprived eyes because god you write such beautiful things and this story is so stunning- it shows how hot and beautiful consent and these kind of dynamics can be. How supportive, healing, nurturing, and spoiling they can be. That the Dom gives, not just takes and cares for his sub. That the boundaries placed out for protection and are equally as respected and held to high importance. That their comfort matters- their health, their body, their safety, their sexual satisfaction matters.

sensuality can be heightened even more and control to can given up in such a beautiful manner. The way he adores her, cares for her, nurtures and in so many ways worships her while being her dom is so beautiful to read. You really highlight the beautiful complexities and meaningfulness of that these dynamics can display!

i'm so... i...

thank you so much

you don't know how much i love this, i cannot convey it

[technicolorxsn]

love how there are pretentious video essays that just repeat the book and meander and ramble about house of leaves. it's what zampanó would have wanted. it is not, however, what I want

[gentlethorns]

not to jerk myself off on y'all's dash lol but i so wish i could post the outline to the story i'm working on. i genuinely think i have something really good on my hands if i can just see it through to the end and polish it up enough. it's scary and fragile yet so enticing

[foxmulderautism]

omffggg so bashar murad, the palestinian artist who collaborated with hatari (iceland’s eurovision act who held palestinian flags during the voting) and is now trying to represent iceland at eurovision, he had his first performance and qualified to the final of their national selection and HIS PERFORMANCE IS SOOOO GOOD he did amazing. it’s full of palestinian flag colours, watermelon imagery, the choreography is inspired by a traditional dance, and like i’m just so happy for him i’ve been following his music since 2021 (maskhara is a great ep btw!!!!) and the idea that there might be palestinian representation at eurovision, on such a massive stage that has also been used for such vile propaganda that the ebu welcomed, i just wish him nothing but the best

[p0tat0-g0ddess]

:/

[coe-lilium]

Oh.

I might've cracked the code of why I like Clare's Belial so much despite him hardly being the most threatening of the trilogies' main villains.

Same delightful-to-read smartass, menace-like behaviour as *this guy*, aka "Coe's favorite Fictional Asshole ever since Summer 2006, never once dethroned".

[impulsivelycontentious]

Uh babe? Being an ass about people's spelling illustrates more how out of touch YOU are than how out of touch THEY are. There are many reasons spelling doesn't always work out or people have wrong ideas about words - of which not reading compex text is not one of them.

Also you should absolutely read spinning silver. It's good shit. 🤷‍♀️

I dunnow maybe read for fun more often than for clout. Reading at all is good. Difficulty with analysing isn't because of the subject matter - we see EXACTLY the same issue with media literacy in film. People have been mad at how progressive star trek is compared to the good old days since what, the second series?

It's a cultural issue and making people read classics isn't going to solve it. Ironically, the best way to better analyze media is to have honest discussions about it.

And part of that is not being condescending and driving people away from reading because what they enjoy doesn't meet your standards of dep enough. You're SUPPOSED to offer things with similar themes or characters - you know, like librarians generally can, and help expand people's horizons via love of the work.

Not whatever this was.

No babe it’s so cool and hot that you always insist that fantasy books written to meet a 4th graders’ comprehension skills have more complex themes and a greater sense of praxis than anything written for adults

[kingdom-creatin]

Actually I have much to say on that specifically (re: last reblog) with the novel so since I can't spam this to my first reader without tearing down plot flow for them I will throw it all here in some form of word vomit because yeah.

The second protag in the book, Lucian, starts off as a really nasty guy. He's got a lot of opinions formed over the years from his childhood and from working for Imperialism Navy that he's fully fed into. He views the majority of the main cast as lesser or as natively dangerous and evil and actively antagonizes a few of them for the first third/half of the book. Most frequently this involves the other main protag, Haeseom, someone who the navy had once owned and raised from birth as a slave general for them but who escaped and now works to take them down. Think everything that a big military power might say to their troops about an escapee that they know they can't win against and that's Luca's view of Haeseom. Eventually his active assholishness dies off and he and the cast are growing to tolerate each other, but his opinions are definitely still there. Throughout the book, he's forced to contend with his attitude, realizing that a lot of the ideas that he's been living in are false or warped. It's also revealed that the seed for this in him is an internalized hatred towards the fact that he has but cannot use magic and feeling like he would be ostracized from both camps.

Learning this does not excuse his actions in the past. Especially with respect to Daria, someone he knew from before, whom he betrayed (alongside their families and family friends, their whole community) so viciously it resulted in the death or capture of nearly a hundred people, for which he was rewarded with rank - all an incentive to join the navy with honors. There's one scene where Daria finally confronts him directly after he does something stupid and gets punished for it. She calls him out for failing to change, for holding onto these views as if the deaths in their past mean nothing, for being selfish and bigoted and yet acting as if they could become friends again, when his own views put her as lesser than him as well.

Even with all of this, by the end of the book Lucian is not redeemed and, as Daria says herself, he's not forgiven. He's growing, yes. He's learning to recognize faults in his views and acknowledge his bigoted attitude, yes. But he's not there yet. He was an asshole, he's still an asshole, and he's learning to try but he's not suddenly a good person. Along that same line, I'm trying to figure out how best to really nail home within the plot but without becoming too heavy handed that Daria does not and very likely will never forgive him and that's also okay. Like, I wanted him and all the ache and emotions with all of this to feel real and to hurt.

I enjoy stories where the asshole transforms by the end into someone who's sincere and sincerely dedicated to being a good person, like, those are good stories. But I'd never feel fulfilled if I made Luca one of them. I needed him to come in as an asshole and to leave as an asshole, with nuance in the fact that he is narratively changed and that he does realize that he could be a better person and that he starts to become one... but he's not there yet and even when he does get there, it doesn't mean any of his past is forgotten or forgive, just that he's been granted the chance to be better moving forward.

[ghostkidet]

Something positive for this blog: I finished writing my prologue yay me !!

[sayruq]

“We came here based on the map published by the Israeli army,” he continues. “They told us to go to the Tal al-Sultan area, and here they are bombing us and bombing our food sources.” Nidal says that he and his family were sitting in their tent when they heard four missile strikes. He later learned that the missiles had directly hit the clinic, the water well, and the adjacent tents in which some food and cooking utensils were stored. Nidal and his neighbors in the displacement camp rushed to rescue the injured, but when he arrived, he was surprised by the horror before him. “We arrived at the place quickly, and the fire was still burning in the clinic and the neighboring tents. There were dozens of bodies and dead people, but we could not distinguish them from one another,” he says. “We did not know who had been burned. The bodies were completely disfigured and dismembered, and we were walking over the fire and the bodies in an attempt to get anyone out who was still alive.” Nidal insists that the bombs that targeted the encampment were not normal, but American-made weapons that “Israel is testing on Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” he says. “We did not find anything,” he adds. “There was nothing that would require bombing. All we found were dismembered children, charred bodies, and scattered organs. We put them in blankets and took them out.” “This is a terror zone. It isn’t a safe zone, as the Israeli army tells us,” Nidal says.

[alex51324]

So, the NDA signed by producers of The Apprentice just expired, and one of them has published a tell-all article. Most of the article is about how they used standard reality-TV tricks to portray Trump as being wealthy and intelligent, when in reality he was, and is, a deeply indebted buffoon.

The money shot, however, comes when Trump and the producers are preparing for climax of the final episode, when the winner will be decided.

Per the FCC's rules for game shows, producers could not be involved in deciding who would be fired each week, or who would ultimately win: it had to be Trump's decision alone, like contestants and viewers were told it was. The producers could, and did, give him a presentation about the strengths and weaknesses of the contestants each time he had to make a decision. These were recorded, in case questions ever arose about whether the producers had crossed the line.

So, for the final episode, there were two contestants remaining. Both were men, one white, the other Black. They'd both done well in the final challenge of the competition. As the producers were summarizing the points for an against each candidate, this happened:

“Yeah,” he says to no one in particular, “but, I mean, would America buy a n— winning?” Kepcher’s pale skin goes bright red. I turn my gaze toward Trump. He continues to wince. He is serious, and he is adamant about not hiring Jackson.

In the finished program, Trump chose the white contestant as the winner.

(Four years later, Trump would propagate the baseless conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not a native-born US citizen and therefore had not legitimately won the presidency.)

The article also describes how women working on the production faced discrimination based on whether or not Trump wanted to look at them while they did their jobs:

While leering at a female camera assistant or assessing the physical attributes of a female contestant for whoever is listening, he orders a female camera operator off an elevator on which she is about to film him. “She’s too heavy,” I hear him say. Another female camera operator, who happens to have blond hair and blue eyes, draws from Trump comparisons to his own Ivanka Trump. “There’s a beautiful woman behind that camera,” he says toward a line of 10 different operators set up in the foyer of Trump Tower one day. “That’s all I want to look at.”

And there's a third anecdote where he pressures a woman producer to break the FCC rules, while being casually misogynistic toward a contestant:

Trump corners a female producer and asks her whom he should fire. She demurs, saying something about how one of the contestants blamed another for their team losing. Trump then raises his hands, cupping them to his chest: “You mean the one with the …?” He doesn’t know the contestant’s name. Trump eventually fires her.

This information is pretty unlikely to persuade anyone who wasn't already persuaded by any of the other things Trump has done and said, which would for anyone else be a career-defining scandal. But it is a useful reminder of who we're dealing with.

(Link is to Slate, an x-number-of-free-articles-a-month site, but the incognito window trick works.)